The Rhetoric of It All

Back in the day-- and a very long time ago it was-- people studied the art of rhetoric. That is, they tried to learn how to use language to persuade. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It concerns the way you formulate your phrases, so as not to offend and insult, so as not to confront and assault. Good rhetoric involves offering a hand of friendship to another person. It does not feel like waving a closed fist.

Nowadays, no one knows anything about rhetoric. The denizens of the therapy culture tell people to express their feelings, whatever that means. They never consider that there are more than a few ways of expressing feeling or even, dare we say, eliciting a certain feeling from another person. But, it requires some skill with language to do so.

So, therapy culture allows people to ignore rhetoric, thereby pretending that any old expression will do. It will not.

And then there is the younger, less literate generation. We might call this the TikTok generation because it prefers sending pictures to sending words. It also prefers playing video games to reading books. One suspects that TikTok has a basic appeal to a generation of functional illiterates. One suspects that filling children's minds with junk thought expressed by fourth-rate writers has turned them off of language, and certainly off of rhetoric. For the record I have never used TikTok and have no plans to do so.

So, now we have direct evidence of the decline and fall of American rhetoric. We find it in a column by the inimitable Miss Manners. As you might guess, I much prefer Miss Manners to TikTok and even to therapy culture.

I will assume that the letter writer is a female, writing to a female. It might be a male writing to a male. In either case, if you want to know how to persuade anyone, it is helpful to know the person’s gender. 

In any case the letter writer feels a need to repair a damaged inter-office relationship. We do not know what happened to damage the relationship, and it would certainly be helpful if we did. Among the first rules of rhetoric is this-- be specific. Droning on in generalities tends to bore people. 

So the letter writer offers this vague preamble:

How should I edit the following email to a colleague so as to reconcile the situation? My honesty is not always expressed politely, even less so when I am tired.

Generally, everyone in my workplace are all weirdos and impolitic, and also great friends, but I need a little extra help with politeness in this case.

Obviously, she needs more than a little extra help with politeness, but we will leave that to the side. The good news is that she does not have bloated self-esteem, the kind that tells her that her dulcet tones are correct, regardless.

So, she offers a draft of an email, and asks Miss Manners to provide an edit. Fair enough, humble enough. Here is the draft:

“Dear Colleague,

“Can we please move past recent events (wherein we disagreed about a trivial topic, both believing ourselves to be correct)? 

However, I was correct, and don’t wish to indicate otherwise. I understand you undoubtedly feel the same.

“We were in a tense situation and were exceptionally sleep-deprived and overstretched. That stress-causing event is finished. We are rested now.

“How can we fix this, or at least lay down arms? I know if you had truly moved past it, you wouldn’t be avoiding me. You can be oblivious and thoughtless as well, and we usually just let things slide. What gives?”

Surely, if you are of a certain age, roughly the age of your humble blogger and Miss Manners, you find this all to be awful, or should I say, beyond awful. It is neither humble, nor modest, nor conciliatory, nor polite.

Miss Manners is not impressed or even amused. She replies:

This letter, at once antagonistic and incendiary, is anything but an apology. Miss Manners wonders what you hoped to achieve by sending it, except to prolong the argument.

She therefore suggests the following edit:

“Dear Colleague,

“How can we fix this?”

She further recommends that you and your colleagues all get more sleep.

Miss Manners is entirely correct. 

If you take a second glance at the prospective email, you will notice that the letter writer does not admit any fault, and in fact rubs in the fact that she was right. And then, she calls her interlocutor oblivious and thoughtless.

Trust me, when you include some implicit and explicit insults in an email, you should not expect to receive a positive response. If you insist that you were in the right, you will not receive a positive response.

If you really want to have another person admit to fault, you might begin by admitting to your own. It sets a better example. 

Another question is this-- why is it not possible in this rather informal workplace, for the letter writer to walk up to the former friend and offer an open hand of friendship, perhaps accompanied by an invitation for coffee?

I am also intrigued by the fact that the workplace in question is chockablock with impolitic weirdos. Under such abnormal circumstances the chances for misunderstanding multiply. If everyone is wearing a different uniform everyone should not expect to be treated as members of the same team.